Just Like Riding a Unicycle

I have returned! I'd apologize to my readers but life has just been insane this summer so you get no such apologies. Since you last left your hero, she has baked exactly once. And the only reason for that was the necessary baking of crumb cake to bribe dissertation committee members to let me get my doctorate. Fun fact: it worked! Another fun fact: you can totally write a dissertation in one summer. It just requires a lot of support and a lot of coffee. So anyway, between the getting a doctorate, getting engaged, and trying to sell my house (which means that my KitchenAid mixer is neatly hidden in a closet instead of out on my counter begging me to bake) it's been hard to find the time to bake. Good thing that the one instance of baking was an adventure and a half!

My grandmother makes delicious crumb cake. I mean, it's just out of this world. So I decided that for my dissertation defense at 10:30 am, I would provide this delicious crumb cake for my committee. I got the recipe from my grandmother on an adorable recipe card and embarked on a journey in which I realize that I've forgotten how to bake. Also that I can't really do math. So here's the problem: the recipe calls for a 15x10x1 inch pan. However, I wanted to use a disposable tin pan so that I wouldn't have to worry about cleaning up after my defense and that size isn't made in the disposable pans. Now picture me standing in the supermarket trying to figure out what size pans I could use to get the appropriate area if I doubled or tripled the recipe. I kid you not, it took about 8 minutes of me standing there. Eventually I figured out that if I doubled the recipe and made 3 crumb cakes with a particular size (I forget which) then I would be pretty close. No problem, right?

Problem. I always forget that doubling affects things like the size bowls that I need. The key to this recipe is that you actually use boxed cake mix but you modify what is added a bit. Actually, you really just substitute sour cream for the water that's called for in the recipe. It makes the cake extra moist and unhealthy. Things actually went fine with the cake part because I used my biggest bowl so there were no issues. Meanwhile, once the cakes were in the oven, I had to go about making the crumb topping. Naturally, I chose a bowl that was too small so that led to some very very careful stirring. But more importantly, I forgot how to do some very basic things.

First of all, I ran out of flour. Now, I know I've said before "Who runs out of flour?!?" but it happened to me again. I guess I underestimated how much 7 cups of flour is. So I sent my (at the time, not quite) fiance to the store to get flour with the direction "just get regular, unbleached flour." I figured I could trust that. While he was out, I set to the task of melting the butter for the crumb. I don't know what sort of stroke I was having at the time but when I tell you that I chose my smallest Pyrex bowl to melt 6 sticks of butter in, I can only wish I were kidding. My logic here was "when it melts, it takes up less space!" Yup. Flawless logic. I should also point out that melting 6 sticks of butter in the microwave takes a long time to do. And no, I don't know why I didn't just melt it over the stove. That would have been smart. So after a lot of time and a lot of mess, I ended up with a bowl of butter that was just barely under the rim of the bowl. Also, it made me realize just how unhealthy this cake is.

As I'm pouring the butter into the crumb mixture, the boy returns triumphantly saying "I asked at the store which flour is best for baking and the person said to get this one!" It's whole wheat flour. I know enough about baking to know that whole wheat flour is not a 1-1 substitution for regular flour because of the gluten content. Basically it behaves differently. And makes cookies really crunchy if you substitute which I've never EVER done before. Of course. Anyway, since I only needed a cup and a half of the whole wheat flour, I decided to go ahead with it because it was only for the crumb.

When you're making the crumb topping, pretty much you mix the melted butter with the dry ingredients until crumbs form. The only way to make this happen is to get your hands dirty. But that's ok because it was sort of fun! I mashed the ingredients and rolled them between my fingers and made a big mess but eventually, I got crumbs. Then I stuck them on top of the three cakes (of course making another mess in the process) and made sure I had a somewhat thick crumb layer. It could do with being a little thicker though. I think my conversions were a little off somehow. Anyway, I baked them up and since there were three cakes, got to keep one for myself to taste. The pictures sadly don't have the powdered sugar on them but since I was making these in advance, I was actually very professional and brought bagged powdered sugar and a sieve to sprinkle the final touch on right before consumption.

This cake is so delicious. I just love it. The cake part of it came out a little crumbly and fall apart-y and I'm not entirely sure why that happened but I'll take that over an awful dense cake. And carefully wrapped and stored in the fridge, the cakes were still very moist and delicious when I brought them to my defense three days later. So I sort of forgot how to bake efficiently but I had a lot of fun doing it. It's been so long and I was just that much happier when I was finally baking.

One final anecdote: Here's why you always bring baked goods to a dissertation defense. During the private grilling portion of the defense, Professor A said, "You're doing great, I just have five more questions to ask you." Professor B jumped in with, "Five more?! There won't be any crumb cake left!" To which Professor A responded, "You're right! I have two more questions to ask you." Statisticians really love their sweets.

And That's Why You Always Bake Before Finals

Hey guys, you know what's better than taking classes? NOT taking classes! It's currently finals week in the most baking-free semester known to mankind. But now the semester is ending and that means there's time to bake again! Even though I wasn't taking any classes (and thus have no finals to take to stress out about), I did spend this semester teaching a course for the first time ever. That's right, I'm mad with power. Therefore, the only thing about finals week for me to worry about is giving my students an exam.

Now, let me give you some background on why I'm baking before giving a final exam. UConn has switched its course evaluation system to an online system. Two friends and I postulated that this would mean a lower response rate than the in-class paper evaluations (which is the opposite of what UConn seemed to hope to achieve besides the whole saving trees thing). We subsequently made a bet that whoever got the lowest response rate pre-bribery would have to buy lunch. Pre-bribery, I didn't lose. Then we decided to add bribery to the mix. I told my students that I'd bring cookies to the final if I won the bet. Well, I didn't actually win, but I didn't lose either. So I'm bringing cookies anyway. Because I'm nice. And frankly, I'm happy to be done with teaching and this is as good an excuse as any to bake!

I have no time nor energy to actually challenge myself tonight so I went with the old standby: Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookies. No nuts, no fuss, just good ol' chocolate chip. Because who doesn't need a nice chocolate chip cookie after a really challenging exam an exam that fairly tests all of the material covered. I decided to make a double batch because I have 40 students and people who have been craving my baking for a while now. So according to the chocolate chip package, that would be 10 dozen cookies! Sounds about right.

There's something so calming about baking. I can't quite describe it. But even when I'm gabbing on the phone with my sister and adding the ingredients, it just starts to put me at ease. Anyway, it's been so long since I made these, I initially couldn't remember how many sticks of butter went in. Other than that though, things went smoothly aside from one really stubborn egg that didn't seem to want to crack. The shell cracked but the membrane wouldn't break! So weird. Also, I was reminded of the time when I was shopping with my mom Santa for my KitchenAid mixer and was discussing what size to get. And I remember saying, "I'll never need that bigger one, that's ludicrous! When would I ever be making that many cookies?" Yup, now is when I could've used that bigger one. The dough was practically spilling out of the mixing bowl. Whoops.

This is a short blog post because there's really nothing to say about chocolate chip cookies. But it is good to be back in the kitchen. Here's a small sampling of the huge number of cookies I'm baking:

They're delicious and they came out perfectly (seriously, I didn't burn a single cookie. They are ALL perfectly baked!) and I can't wait to share them with my students and friends. It's good to be back. And if any of my students are reading this right now, GO STUDY!

I Just Want to Bake!

I have not baked anything since the last time I posted. How sad is that? Life has been completely crazy with travel and interviews and dissertation and teaching and getting addicted to drinking tea and I haven't had time to make a single chocolate chip cookie. I have, however, had time to blend my own teas on adagio.com. I made them all Muppet themed. Because it's fun. And I'm a child. (If you're interested, here's the link: http://www.adagio.com/signature_blend/list.html?userId=362161.) I haven't tried them all but Animal and Miss Piggy are delicious. And yes, that's a weird sentence to type.

But never fear, loyal readers! I will return soon (possibly as soon as Sunday!) and I will bake something. Even if it is just a chocolate chip cookie. Although there is this green tea cheesecake recipe that I'm dying to try... Hmm...

Don't you just wish sometimes that life had a "pause" button?

A Valentine's Surprise and a Book Review

Hello all! And a happy belated Valentine's day! Let me preface this by saying that I am not a huge fan of Valentine's Day as a holiday at all. But in the spirit of doing something nice (and cheap) I decided to make the Amish Friendship Bread that my boyfriend loves so much. Followers of this blog will remember that I have talked about this recipe before. However, I didn't just think of baking this bread out of the blue. There's a backstory!

Recently, I read a novel called "Friendship Bread" by Darren Gee. It's your pretty standard chick lit but I needed something light to read to refocus my brain a bit. In the book, the characters receive bags of the Amish Friendship Bread and talk about how baking brings them together and changes lives and whatnot. It actually took some turns that I wasn't expecting so I was fairly impressed considering the genre. Overall, I would recommend the book as a light read and it was on the better side of mediocre. More importantly, when I was reading the book, I was overcome with the desire to bake this bread again. They kept talking about using the starter dough for variations on the original recipe and freezing the dough so you're not baking every 10 days (I didn't know you could do that!) and then, as an added bonus, included actual recipes at the end of the book! So that's all I needed for motivation.

Tidbits: Apparently the Amish Friendship Bread isn't actually Amish. It's an evil ploy by the Girl Scouts or something like that. Also, the novel has a website where people can contribute recipes and tips all about the friendship bread. So, that's where I got my recipe for the starter (www.friendshipbreadkitchen.com) and some tips about freezing the dough for later use.

So, in planning my Valentine's surprise, I had to subtract 10 days from Valentine's to allow the starter dough to do its whole starter dough-y thing. This was almost a problem because my yeast was actually dead (because it was super old) and I really didn't want to go out to the store in the snow to buy some. But I did because I am a good person. The other issue here was that since it was a surprise, I had to find places to hide my starter dough so my boyfriend wouldn't see what was going on. In hindsight, I probably could've left it on the kitchen table and he wouldn't have noticed. So for 10 days, I was hiding a bag of dough in a variety of places including (but not limited to) a big pot with a lid and the oven itself. The oven was a bit of a risk but he never turns it on anyway so I wasn't too concerned.

Things worked out perfectly because on Valentine's eve, my boyfriend had a hockey game that he left for at 9 pm so that gave me a solid three hours to bake the bread, make the house smell like cinnamon sugar, and go to bed at a reasonable hour. Let the baking commence! The last time I made this, I think I really screwed up the ratio of starter to ingredients. This time, I was very careful and did the good math and have 3 bags of starter now chilling in my freezer for future use. From there, it was a simple ingredient adding with no real problems. The dough was a little lumpy and hard to mix but otherwise, I'm practically a professional baker when it comes to this bread.

Observe where my confidence gets me. The bake time and temperature are wrong. After an hour of baking, the bottom was starting to burn but the center of the bread was not fully cooked. Keep in mind, it's nearly midnight at this point and I'm exhausted. Sadly, it took another 15-20 minutes of checking and rotating and generally trying to will my bread to bake properly and I still ended up with a slightly burned bottom. Sad. Also, one of the loaves got stuck to the pan (which has never, ever happened before!) so I lost the bottom of one of the pieces. On the bright side, this meant I got to taste it! So delicious. I used the variation that included French Vanilla pudding mix and chocolate chips and it was glorious. Moist and yummy and mmmmm.... I can't wait to try more variations with the starter dough. In a nutshell, my boyfriend was surprised and delighted and good bread was had by all. Here's some pictures of the final outcome for you to drool over:

Any tips on modifying cook times and temperatures to avoid my problem here would be much appreciated. Sadly, there will be no Disney moment this post because I want a chance to watch a few more before I post more. Don't worry though! Disney is still in my heart. I gave Disney stickers to my students who did well on a worksheet this week.

I'll Give You a Viennese Finger...

The blogger is back! I haven't blogged since September and that's very sad. Stupid life getting in the way. I actually have done a lot of baking lately, including 6 types of Christmas cookies, 2 pies, those damn eclairs, and a few breads. I was just a lazy blogger. I even missed my one year bakerversary! Oh well. Nevertheless, new semester, new year, new baking books, new levels of ineptitude. Hold on to your hats because this one's a doozy!

So, on this frigid Connecticut afternoon, I decided to ring in a new semester of colloquium by bringing in some cookies. I didn't want anything too challenging or with too many steps so I consulted a new book that I got for Christmas called "Cookie Heaven" and found a recipe for Butter Viennese Fingers. There are pictures and these ones are cute. They look like fingers dipped in chocolate at both ends. And there's only 4 ingredients! Perfect!

Not perfect. I like to believe that I didn't magically lose all of my cooking skills but I must have. This was an epic disaster. Step 1: cream softened butter and confectioners' sugar. Easy. Step 2: Add flour. Easy! Step 3: Use a piping bag to pipe 3 inch finger shapes on the pan. Fail. I really should have known better here. As I was scooping the dough into the pastry bag, I knew it was going to be too cold and too thick to ever be able to squeeze through the tube. Did that stop me? Not a chance. I huffed and I puffed and I got a blister on my hand. But not even one iota of dough came out of that pastry bag. Fine. I can be creative. I decided to run the pastry bag under hot water. It seemed like it was starting to work a little so I went through several rounds of this. Finally, I managed to get one teensy tiny dot of dough on the pan. Ridiculous.

I needed a better plan. I couldn't think of one. I tried leaving the bag on top of the hot oven while I went to answer some emails. I tried mixing the dough some more. I tried using a larger tip on the pastry bag (which, by the way, made a complete mess because I had to take all the dough out and then put it back in) but none of these techniques were doing a thing other than frustrating me. And so, with a great roar of frustration and anger, I threw all the dough back in the mixer, took out my cookie scoop and just started scooping round cookies instead of precious finger shaped cookies. Take that, Cookie Heaven!

Of course, this warped the bake time a bit. I took them out when I was supposed to and the bottoms were only slightly browned and the middles were definitely not cooked. So I tossed them in for another 10 minutes or so. At this point, I was beyond caring about the potential for overbaking these cookies. Pretty much massively frustrated. So after baking, there was one step left: Melting chocolate to dip the cookies in.

I apparently forgot how to melt chocolate. This appears to be a running theme in my baking because no matter how many times I melt chocolate (which is really, really often!) I seem to screw it up. So, stupidly, I followed the directions in the book that said I could microwave the chocolate. How many times have I told myself not to microwave chocolate? I could probably look back and find out but it will just make me feel dumb. Nevertheless, I microwaved. Things were looking good. The chocolate was getting nice and smooth and then BAM! It all just congealed. I don't know what happened. Possibly I burned the chocolate but it didn't smell burned. It just had no interest in melting. Yes, I have sentient chocolate.

So I went back to the old double boiler. Except I just got a small pot and stuck the bowl I had been using in the microwave on top of it. Normally this works. Normally it doesn't take 20 minutes for 2 oz of chocolate to melt. But it just wasn't working. Then I thought that maybe I shouldn't use that bowl. So I grabbed a metal mixing bowl from my new 6 bowl mixing bowl set that I got for Christmas from the restaurant supply store that is absolutely magical (sidebar: seriously, that store is AMAZING) and I put the chocolate in the small metal bowl. No luck.

Now I say to myself, "It must be a chocolate problem, not a tool problem. You must have screwed the chocolate up when you microwaved it." So in the garbage went my partially melted, partially congealed chocolate. I grabbed some new chocolate, stuck it in the metal bowl and waited. And waited. And added some more water in my pot because all of the water had evaporated. And waited. By this point, there was cursing and anger. Finally, I just gave up. I seriously contemplated throwing all the cookies in the trash (a notion I had been developing when I couldn't get the dough through the pastry bag) but I decided I'd just make do with what I had. I dipped the cookies in the (somewhat) melted chocolate and noticed that the cookies were practically crumbling in my hands. So, with cookie and chocolate under my fingernails, I finally set them out to dry. They look like this:

I waited about half an hour and then went to check on them and the chocolate was still completely wet. Well then. As if these cookies hadn't put me through enough. So I left them out on the stove and left my house. I have no idea how they taste. I have no cookies for colloquium. I am so massively annoyed by these cookies that it's not even funny anymore. And it's cold out. So much for my first adventure out of the gate. Maybe the next one will be better. Who would have thought that just four ingredients could have treated me so badly? To pick up my mood, I'm going to include a couple pictures of successes from the last few months:

FYI, that pecan pie was fantastic. Until next time, loyal readers!

A Disney Moment: Mulan
Ok, so one of the [many] reasons I slowed down blogging was because we're entering another Disney movie slump. It's hard to summon the desire to watch some of the movies coming up. As a result, I watched Mulan probably 4 months ago and finished Emperor's New Groove (the last in this group of 5) maybe a month ago.  This from the people who would marathon 3 movies in one day. Plus it's a hard sell getting my grandparents (who are now living with my mom and sister thanks to Hurricane Sandy) to watch an animated film. Anywho, on with Mulan!

I love Mulan. I love the notion of a female character breaking out of a stereotype box a bit (much like Belle does with her READING) and that Mulan is not romance obsessed. I am not saying that there is perfect execution here but I respect the attempt. My sister and I have started doing this fun thing where we re-edit the movies we watch to make them better. For instance, we would say that we don't need the pet dog character at all or they should cut the scene with the ancestors. Again, all in the noble name of pacing and flow. But we still really like Mulan, despite its flaws. The song "Reflection" probably should have been left on the cutting room floor but we get such gems as "I'll Make a Man Out of You" and that matchmaker song right at the beginning. And the sheer devastation and destruction when they come across the town that had been burned to the ground packed a heavy punch.

Overall, we like it and it's the best of this group of five movies. Of course, that's not saying much.

This One Knocked the Stuffing Out of Me...

Welcome back! Stupid productivity getting in the way of blogging. The semester is back in full swing which means that I'm back teaching and doing research and studying for my general exam (October 3!) and trying to find time to do a billion things. So I figured I'd jump start my productivity with catching up on my blogging. I guess I'll start with the adventure that was trying to bake two things at once. Commence chaos!

Oh wait, before I start: apparently the tarelles weren't bad. In fact, people thought they were really good. Maybe my taste buds were scrambled that day or maybe I just don't like them but in any case, I am officially removing the assessment that they are the world's worst cookie. My apologies to the Cake Boss. Except not really because as one of the projects I was making on this occasion, I made his Eclairs. Sort of.

Let me explain. I planned to make eclairs. I figured that it was time to get away from the cookie recipes in the Cake Boss book before completely writing off the cookbook. So the next section is pastries. And the first recipe for pastries is eclairs. Step 1: make the pastry shells. Ok, cool. That was pretty easy. Mix up the dough and put it in a piping bag and pipe out eclair shapes. Easy. I'm getting to be pretty good at piping now. I baked them up and they puffed nicely. Success! Well, short lived success. It was at this point that I noticed that the pastry cream has to be refrigerated overnight. Oops. However, the shells can be frozen and defrosted for use whenever. Awesome! Problem solved. Oh, I should also mention that the way to test if these were done was if they come off the pan easily when picked up with a thumb and index finger. Super scientific. May have ended up with some very hot fingers.

It was about this point that I got a text from a friend informing me that she finally got a job. Yay for jobs! And how should one celebrate a new job? With stuffed cupcakes, of course! So while the pastry shells were baking, I perused my cookbooks for a recipe for stuffed cupcakes. I didn't have one. But hey, I bake a lot. I have the knowledge and the power to mix and match recipes! So I decided to use the dark chocolate cupcakes that I've made previously from America's Test Kitchen and stuff and frost them with cream cheese frosting. Did I mention that I was baking all this late at night with the added pressure that I was going to be headed home to Jersey the next day? No? Well, I was. I may have been a little crazy.

So, the most logical course of action to me was to whip up the cream cheese frosting in Connecticut and bring it to New Jersey where I would bake and stuff the cupcakes. Completely logical, right? Sure. I whipped up the cream cheese frosting quickly enough (though it was actually a huge pain because I kept having to wash all of my materials) and stuck it in the fridge. Oh yeah, and I was simultaneously cooking dinner. Is the imagery of my kitchen mess clear enough for you by now? Yes? Good.

Ok, so where am I? Dinner's done, frosting's done, pastry shells done. Last thing tonight is the pastry cream! Did you know that custard is hard to make? I didn't. If I had, I wouldn't have tried to do this late at night after having baked for hours already. So, for those of you who don't know, custard is a tricky thing. Also, choosing what size pots and bowls to use is a tricky thing. And when I say tricky, I mean "I'm bad at it." I started with my egg yolks, flour, and sugar in a small bowl. Bad idea. I could see immediately that that would be a problem. So I moved everything to the medium bowl. I had to whisk those ingredients together until "they lighten in color." The ingredients didn't seem to combine well. I kinda had lumpy crumbly egg yolk messes. But I figured it would all even out when I combined it with the milk. (It didn't.)

This is where things get dangerous with custard. You have to be extremely careful to not cook the eggs with the hot milk. To avoid that, you first temper your mixture with one cup of the hot milk and then add the whole mixture to the pot with the milk. It was at this point that I realized that I really could've used a bigger pot. It was also when I realized that the medium bowl wasn't going to be big enough and the big bowl was dirty. Ahhh! Plus at this point, you have to very carefully blend with a hand mixer while moving the pot on and off the heat so that the mixture boils but doesn't cook the yolks. So much multitasking! With one hand, I was mixing and with the other hand I was washing a bowl and at some point I had to add the butter as my "thickening agent" and it was a mess. I was supposed to end up with a mixture that was very thick but was instead pretty thin. Also, the bottom of my mixture totally just cooked. Like, egg yolk omelet on the bottom of the pan. But whatever, I'll just take the non-cooked part and use that and I'll just have a bit less than I wanted, right? Sigh. I think you can all see where this is going.

So, I covered my thin mixture and put it in the fridge overnight hoping that it would thicken up overnight. Apparently that's not how custards work. The next morning I got all excited to fill my eclairs. I sliced my pastry shells and I went to fill my pastry bag with the filling. Not happening. It was a thin drizzle of messy. So I started Googling quick fixes for custards. There really aren't any. They all say to start over except for one which said I could fold in some whipped cream. Hmm. I don't have whipped cream but I'm sad enough about my custard right now to go buy some. So I did. Don't use this quick fix. It doesn't work. Here's a picture of my sad sad attempt to fill eclairs:

It's not attractive. But there are bright sides. The first is that the pastry shells looked good so they went right back into the freezer to be used another day. The second is that the custard actually tasted pretty good so barring my inability to make custard, this recipe probably would've turned out well. So the pastry shells are awaiting a second attempt at custard which will happen sometime in the future when I am not in a delicate mental state.

So with this failure hanging over me, I headed home to make the cupcakes. Baking cupcakes is easy. I had no problem here. Stuffing cupcakes is a different story. I found one thing online that recommended just putting your filling in a pastry bag with a long tip, jabbing it into the cupcake and squeezing. Theoretically, the cupcakes will puff up with the filling and it will be wonderful. There was even a video demonstrating this phenomenon! All that happened for me was getting a very narrow tube of filling into the cupcake. No puffing up or anything. So I tried a different approach. I used a small knife to cut a cone out of the middle of the cupcake, filled the cupcake, cut off the tip of the cone, and returned the rest of the cupcake cone to its rightful place. I referred to that last step as "putting the hat back on" because I was a little slap happy at this point. In hindsight, since I was frosting these cupcakes with the same filling anyway, I really didn't have to put the hat back on. Regardless, these cupcakes were freakin' delicious. The cream cheese with the dark chocolate complemented each other perfectly and when you sliced the cupcake in half, it looked beautiful. See for yourself:

Pretty good, right? They were so yummy. So, one success and one fail and one very very tired baker.

A Disney Moment: Hercules

Ah, the final member of this group of five (finally). Hercules scores a 2/5 and let me just say that I really love it. The villain is fun and sharp. The references to Greek mythology are at times blatant but at other times subtle. I recommend suspending all your knowledge of Greek mythology before watching because otherwise, nothing will make sense and it will only make you angry. I love love love the music (with the notable exception of "Go the Distance") and the Greek chorus narrators and the sassy heroine and Danny Devito as Phil and the cameo of Scar and yay! I just really like this movie. It's quick but it doesn't feel too quick to me and the comic relief characters have pretty minimal screen time (they should have even less but I'm willing to let that go). Overall, I like it. Whew, it took a long time to finish those 5 movies.

World's Worst Cookies

Well, for those of you getting frustrated with my competency in the kitchen, here's a treat for you. As an aside, is there an opposite to "ineptitude"? I'm pretty sure "eptitude" isn't a word. Just wondering if there's a positive root word for ineptitude. Ok, moving on...

So, the Cake Boss is failing me. I know it's been a while since I've baked from the Cake Boss cookbook because I got distracted by the really yummy recipes in Martha and America's Test Kitchen. So I decided that it was time to get back to this book. This is the only cookbook that I am cooking through in order so that meant that the next cookies in the book were Tarelles (i.e. vanilla cookies). Ok, vanilla cookies. Not terribly interesting but I've had good vanilla cookies before so why not? I had a slight problem with these because the recipe calls for pastry flour and I couldn't find pastry flour in any of my supermarkets. However, the recipe does say that all-purpose flour can be substituted so I didn't think too much of it.

First step was to mix together sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Easy. Made a bit of a mess with the vanilla but no big deal there. Next step was to add shortening. This was almost a big problem because I was almost 1/2 a cup short! I say almost because I finished off my container of Crisco and thought I had another but did not. Eventually I found Crisco sticks in my cabinet though. Success! By the way, I'm not a Crisco diva that I need to have the sticks but I had a coupon for them so I bought them.

Then I had to paddle in some milk until "thoroughly absorbed". I disagree with that "thoroughly absorbed" assessment. I was mixing it like crazy but it still looked like watery cottage cheese for several minutes. It wasn't very attractive. But fine, eventually, I managed to get it combined-ish. Add flour and baking powder and I'm all done with the actual combining of ingredients.

Now comes the super fun part. I had to roll out these cookies into rings. There were very specific directions about rolling half the dough into a 30 inch rope and then cutting pieces based on another measurement and then rolling those out and initially, I sort of followed that. It was pretty unnecessary though, as long as you're confident that you can form uniform-sized cookies. So the measurements weren't my problem. My problem was the dough itself. Rolling ropes of dough can be really awful if you've got a super sticky dough or a very crumbly dough (both of which I've dealt with and documented here) but this dough was neither of those things. It's hard to describe though. It didn't stick to the surface and it didn't stick to my hands. It also did not stick to itself which made forming complete rings basically impossible. The other problem is that it kept falling apart as I rolled it. I don't mean that it crumbled. I mean that, as I rolled a rope of dough, if I rolled any piece too thinly, it became two ropes. This made the concept of making a "Twisty Tarelle" completely impossible. To do that, I had to fold the dough rope in half and then roll it against the work surface so it would make a spiral. It did not. It just broke. A lot. After trying this for several minutes, I just gave up and stuck to the regular tarelles.

So eventually, I delicately rolled out two cookie trays' worth of these cookies. And realized that I had barely used half the dough. Awesome. I baked them for the appropriate amount of time and until the bottoms were slightly browned as specified. Pretty sure they were baked perfectly. I put them on the racks to cool while I rolled the rest of the cookies. No big problems there besides those already mentioned. At this point though, I had the sneaking suspicion that these cookies might be a bit bland so I decided to add some sprinkles. The picture shows some of the cookies with sprinkles so why not? I'll tell you why not. Because sprinkles don't stick to the cookies. I tried. The only way to get the sprinkles to stick was to really press them into the dough which destroyed the shape of the cookie so after attempting this with three cookies, I gave up. Here's a picture of the finished product before I give you a taste assessment though:

These cookies taste bad. I had my boyfriend taste one at the same time as me and we looked at each other and he said, "they're not bad..." which usually means they're not good. I was a half step away from spitting mine out. They are so DRY. There's no moisture to them so it's like trying to eat seven saltines or a mouthful of flour or something. I've only had this type of texture once before when I tasted a cookie and it crumbled to dust in my mouth and I almost choked on the cookie dust. At least I didn't make those cookies though. Those may be worse. These are really bad too though. I don't even know how I should have made them better.

So at this point, I'm pretty displeased with Cake Boss. His cookies are very hit or miss. I'm thinking that I'll try to make one of his pastries next to see if he's better with those. These cookies though...thumbs down. So, anyone want some terrible cookies? I have about 40 of them and nobody to eat them! Seriously, suggestions of what to do with these are welcome. I don't know if I want to subject anyone I like to them though. Sigh. What a disappointment.

Oh, and let me just put in a plug for the contest I've entered. I am competing in phdcomics.com's 2 minute thesis contest. If I get enough votes, I will get my thesis turned into a comic which would be totally cool. Voting ends on August 20 so if you would please vote and share with your friends to extend my network of voters, that'd be terrific. Thanks in advance and I promise, if I win, there will be cookie sharing. Here's the link to vote: http://www.phdcomics.com/tv/2minute/#133. The title of my audio clip is "[Intentionally Left Missing]"

A Disney Moment: Hunchback of Notre Dame

There's no way to sum up this movie besides this statement: My sister and I rented this movie from the library FIVE times. That's right. For about a month and a half, we would rent Hunchback and then stare at it and not want to watch it. We really really didn't want to watch this movie. Finally, we settled down to get it over with (I think we may have rewarded ourselves with fast food first) and well, I guess I didn't hate it quite as much as I thought I would. Which isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.

I don't really know what bothers me about this film. The villain isn't exactly scary. That's not to say that he isn't evil. He's probably the most evil Disney villain what with all the fire and brimstone and wanting to burn gypsies. But unless you're an adult and thinking "he's one amoral SOB" then he doesn't particularly inspire fear. I will always argue that Ursula is a better villain than Frollo is.

I think the movie tries to cram too many plot lines in and I don't really care for the other male protagonist (you know, the one that isn't Quasimodo that I can't remember the name of). The music is ok and the animation is fine but it just never grabbed me. Also, the gargoyles. Are they just Quasimodo's subconscious speaking or are they really alive? This bugged me. I don't mind if we have talking statues but the ambiguity of it made me uneasy. So, in this grouping, it's a 5/5. But at least we're done with it and the librarians can stop thinking that we're unhealthily obsessed with Hunchback.